Fantasy Architecture – SketchUp

A while ago we built a imaginary or fantasy city in 3D Studio Max – partly as a way of experimenting with the software and partly as a way to get around the rules implied of our Virtual London model of not being able to insert any politically sensitive buildings.

As part of the export process we used the Oblivion Engine to visualise the city in real-time, a technique which works remarkably well and one that we will have a tutorial on shortly. The movie below provides a sample flythough of the city in Oblivion.

Since our first development Google released SketchUp, their free of charge 3D modelling software. SketchUp is a powerful 3D modeller and one which is both fun and intuitive to use – not something you could say about 3D Max. As such it has led to the development of a number of fantasy cities such as ‘Sun City’ which we feature below.

Developed and posted by a YouTube user known as foxmtbr it provides an insight into the sort of city creations possible with SketchUp.